I would not say that this wine tasted “sassy”, in any way really. However, that said, this was a superb Riesling. If Riesling is your thing, check this one out. It’s divine on a hot Texas summer night.

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This one is minimal, so I gave it a minimal background. We’ve got a guy playing cricket I think, with what I can only assume are… robot legs? Cybernetically enhanced athletes; those kooky Australians! As for the wine, bleh, not the best.

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I’m actually off on vacation in Wisconsin at the moment, but through the wonders of technology, I’ve arranged for a series of posts to happen while I’m away. Mostly bringing the primo vino series up to date, since I have a backlog of pictures to post!

We’ll start with this one, called Jargon.

I love the sentiment on this bottle. Some of you may be disappointed that I only post superficial descriptions of the wine featured in primo vino art. Well the reason for that is because I think a lot of wine descriptions are at best vague, or worst, a bunch of flowery nonsense. But someone else has already gone way deeper into this that I care to. Check out this guy’s diatribe for a good laugh (it’s a pdf, FYI)

I really like this label. It’s quite simple, but the big starry sky and the airstream trailer–well it’s hard not to like it. Both those things conjure up thoughts of fun times. I’d like to drink this wine in an airstream trailer on some cool autumn evening. mmmm

As I mentioned in the last one of these posts, I’m way behind on posting the artwork for cool bottles of wine. So much so that I’ve got three bottles here that I’ve picked up over the course of the last couple months all from the same vintner, waiting to be drank. Let’s knock them all out at once, shall we? The following picture is going to demand a lot of explanation:

So there’s the three bottles of wine, with some train-themed artwork. Some background: Snoqualmie pass is a passage through the Cascade Mountains in the the state of Washington, which the Milwaukee Road (my favorite railroad) had an electrified line running through, here pictured in the 1950s. The large image in the background is a lithograph print of a painting called “Bipolars Over Snoqualmie” by Larry Fisher. This is also my first attempt at making mattes to frame a print! I think it turned out pretty solid. If you view it up close, there are a few imperfections, but seen from afar, I think my work is just a reasonable facimile of the work done at the ultra-overpriced frame-makers.

Speaking of viewing up close, this photo is included at 100% original size, unlike most others on here. You may want to use CTRL and + or – to zoom the web-browser in and out to make it easier to view.

In setting up the shot, I tossed in an assortment of stuff I like: my trumpet, a couple old rolls of film, a spare loudspeaker that I’ve got lying around, a book about stars that I found while rummaging through the closet today, the number Pi, and my piano along the bottom! There’s a balsa wood trestle I scratchbuilt in the background holding models of the same two train locomotives as in the painting. A goal of mine is to eventually recreate the scene shown in the painting as part of an HO scale model railroad. That’s gonna take years.

There’s also a big white arcs in the glass which are present because I “light painted” a 5 second exposure (f/8 @ ISo100 on the Canon 50mm). The path I traced with a small desk lamp is also visible in the tops of the wine bottles themselves, along with the dark outline of where the photographer stood, just to the left of the arcs.

The last thing of interest besides the wine is the Tamron lens, a new acquisition for me, which I’m super friggin stoked about! It’s a 10-24mm, which translates to 16mm-38mm in traditional 35mm (film) parlance. SUPERwide! It’s going to be way cool to have access to those mega-wide angle shots now, oh yeah! I remember many-a-situation in which I wished I could back up more, but just couldn’t. This lens will be incredible for landscapes, indoors, and close-quarters shots.

Ok, but back to the wine! I believe it is actually made in the Snoqualmie region of Washington state. Tonight I opened up the Cabernet and I’m pleased to report that it’s actually quite good! Nothing to totally freak out over, but a very solid cabernet. Hmmm. If that Whistle Stop Red is decent, I could see myself drinking a lot of it. I wholly approve of the label. Lastly, there’s three close shots of the wine labels for those who might read the vino posts as a series. Here they are:

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Proudly presenting, for the berry connoisseur who has tried them all: tayberries.

Wait, what?

Yes, that’s right,

They’re very similar to raspberries, with a few subtle but important differences:

-they’re not hollow inside.

-the shape is a bit longer and skinnier

-the flavor is similar to a raspberry, but more tart or sour maybe (but not in a bad way), and also a bit stronger. Their taste is a bit more potent, although not dramatically so.

For comparison, here is a bunch of raspberries (left) next to the tayberries (right).

Basically it’s like a raspberry variant, which still has the seeds that get stuck in your teeth, but a bit more of an exotic twist in the taste. I’d never once seen these in the grocery store before this weekend, and I will say that if I ever see them again, there’s a 100% chance that I’ll be buying more. I loves me some berries, and these are a treat! Interestingly, if you let the berries ripen in the fridge for a few days, they turn even darker and the flavor gets less piquant, also changing character a bit, with a hint of what tastes like grape in the over-ripe berry. Wierd!

And awesome!

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It’s a very simple design, but I have admired the looks of this bottle on the grocery store shelf for long enough. Incidentally, I am way behind in posting pictures for this series, so expect a lot of wine bottles in the near future!